Page 41 of The Devil's Ransom

“You used to work at Plitvice Lakes National Park, right?”

“Yeah. Worst two years of my life. Picking up the trash from all of the tourists year-round. All I did was walk those paths. Miles and miles, picking up shit that people tossed.”

“Was there a place you could hide something? Like a trunk?”

“Oh, yeah. There are caves and hideaways all over that place. It’s like the place was created for pirates. Why?”

The waitress came over and Branko ordered two more drinks. When she left, Branko said, “I have a little bit of a problem from Andrei. He’s given me something to hide. Something that needs to be kept secret, but because we move around so much, I can’t use one of our places. I need someplace secure, where nobody will find it.”

Pushka said, “So you want to hide it in the woods? That’s insane.”

“No, it’s smart. Is there a cave you know of?”

“Branko, the national park is blanketed with tourists. They have thousands of people a week go through there.”

“But they’re only allowed on the paths, right? Surely you know of a place they don’t go. That nobody goes.”

Pushka thought for a moment, then said, “There’s a major cave called Supljara—meaning Silver Lakes. The tourists walk up a shitload of stairs through it, but underneath there are hollows that are unknown. I used to go into them to smoke a joint now and then. As far as I know, nobody even knows they exist. I could sit there for hours hearing the people go by. It was like my special hiding place.”

“Can you still find it? Now, at night?”

Wary, Pushka said, “Yeah, I guess, but it’s really not that safe at night. It’s a long way to the bottom, and the stairs are something out of a medieval castle. I mean like carved out of stone and super steep.”

Branko said, “I got the money for us to continue, but it’s predicated on hiding this box. I can cover your rent in Korcula and Split, but only if you help me with this. It’s the price we pay.”

Thirty minutes later they were driving down the A1 highway through the countryside, passing by one small town after another. After two hours of staring at the headlights racing along the blacktop, the woods passing by in a blur, the road went through the entrance to the park, a hotel, restaurant, and parking on the left and the park on the right. Branko began to turn into the parking lot for the tour buses and Pushka said, “No, keep going on the highway. We’re going to jump the fence. The park is closed, and there’s no way we’re going to lug that trunk to where I want to go through the main gate. We’ll pull over next to the path, where the road comes right up to the edge.”

They crawled down the blacktop another mile, maybe a mile and a half, with Pushka shouting to pull over every hundred meters, then saying he was wrong and to keep going. Eventually he seemed satisfied. Branko pulled as far off the road as he could, snuggling under the trees, and Pushka left the vehicle.

He was gone about twenty minutes, and Branko used the time to stick an Apple AirTag on the base of the trunk. He held his iPhone to it, registered the tag, and named it “Demon Seed.” He tested the tag with the Find My feature of the phone, saw the tag was active, and closed the app just as Pushka returned.

Pushka said, “This is it, but I’m telling you, it’s going to be rough.”

“How rough?”

“Like three stories of stone steps from the Middle Ages. One wrong slip and we’re going down.”

“Give me a hand.”

They wrestled the trunk out of the back of the SUV, setting it on the ground. Pushka said, “That thing is heavy. I’m not sure we can do this at night.”

“You brought a headlamp, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s the same as daylight. Let’s go.”

They both turned on their lamps and began walking through the woods, finally coming to a simple wooden fence marking the outer edge of the park. They hoisted the trunk over and began again, finally reaching a footpath with another railing. After crossing it, Branko said, “Which way?”

Pushka pointed to the left and Branko shined his headlamp, seeing a gaping darkness that swallowed his light like the maw of a whale, the blackness overpowering the feeble stab of his lamp. He went forward and saw a set of stairs carved out of the rock, enhanced with slipshod concrete work, the entire thing disappearing into the black hole, an iron railing on the side away from the cave wall. The entire width was just barely smaller than the trunk itself, and the stairs switched back and forth down the rock wall.

Itwasgoing to be rough.

He returned to Pushka, and they began laboriously dragging the trunk down the incline. Sweating and swearing after the third narrow switchback, Pushka said, “What’s in this thing, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Some type of papers or something that Andrei wants hidden. I didn’t open it. It’s locked up tight.”

Eventually they reached the bottom, the lake and waterfalls of the park visible in the moonlight outside the entrance, a wooden boardwalk leading in to where they stood. Branko said, “Okay, this is what the tourists do. Where did you go for a smoke?”

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